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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29403117">Seven Days of Sex(tus)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch'>Elldritch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Because sometimes the only way to get your necromancer to fucking eat is to feed him while fucking, Blindfolds, Blow Jobs, Butt Plugs, Campetence porn, Cunnilingus, Edging, F/M, Face-Sitting, Food Play, I promise, Impact Play, Knifeplay, Look the actual fic isn't as hardcore as the tags make it sound, Masturbation, Object Insertion, Pal lays pipe, Pegging, Penis In Vagina Sex, Porn with a smattering of plot, Pre-Canon, Restraints, Rimming, Sensation Play, Shower Sex, Strap-Ons, Teasing, Temperature Play, This fic is basically x-rated fluff, Wrestling, necromancy used for sex reasons: psychometry edition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:07:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,912</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29403117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Set pre-canon. Palamedes has just proposed to Dulcinea, and been rejected. Camilla knows just what to do to make him feel better.</p><p>This was very nearly PWP, but I accidentally got cam/pal feels all over it</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Camilla Hect/Dulcinea Septimus/Palamedes Sextus, Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>CamPalentine'sDay 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Seven Days of Sex(tus)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To all outside observers, Palamedes Sextus, Master Warden of the Sixth, is a paragon of all that House’s virtues. Rational, calm, measured, able to consider problems unemotionally, and make decisions based on evidence alone. He is never hasty, and always acts with the good of the House in mind. Camilla Hect, in turn, is the epitome of a model Sixth cavalier; cautious and moderate and tactically-minded on the training floor and off it.</p><p>Behind closed doors is another matter.</p><p>In private, Cam is a force of nature, fighting and fucking with the unstoppable momentum of a whirlwind or a forest fire. Pal, in turn, loves to be reckless and ill-considered, to throw himself blindly at whatever new debauchery Cam suggests, without a thought for the consequences. </p><p>It’s a game they can only play together. An urge they can only indulge in the quiet privacy of their quarters. They both know that, even at her wildest, even at his most impulsive, Camilla the Sixth could never allow her Warden to come to harm.</p><p>Usually, they ration out their time together; between his duties as Warden, his flesh-magic studies to help Duchess Septimus, and Camilla’s nagging insistence that he spend at least some time on petty concerns like eating and sleeping, they have little left for indulgences. </p><p>Today <em> the letter </em>arrived. Not unexpected, and not cruelly done, but a blow nonetheless. No shuttle would be arriving to bring the Master Warden a dying bride. Camilla can see that beneath his pragmatism, Palamedes is hurting. </p><p>She has a plan. </p><p>She clears his calendar. The memo goes out (and isn’t Palamedes surprised to receive it); <em>the Warden is working on something vitally important, and must not be disturbed for the next week.</em> The kitchen in their tiny suite is stocked, and several of Camilla’s most trusted comrades from Swordsman’s Spire are stationed at the end of their corridor on rotation, to turn away all comers (Cam knows that half the bloody Sixth will regard <em> their </em> paper, <em> their </em> project, <em> their </em>study to be the exception to her very clearly stated rule) and to keep even the most persistent at some remove. She does not intend to be quiet, and she does not wish to be overheard.</p><p>If Palamedes’ prodigious mind is consumed by grief, then Cam has just the solution. She’s going to fuck his brains out. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day One</strong>
</p><p>Anticipation of Dulcie’s response had made the Warden bury himself in his work for days; his hipbones and scapulae are more prominent than Cam will tolerate, like blades thrust through his body, so the first day looks like this:</p><p>They are together on the wide expanse of Palamedes’ bed. She is sprawled across the pillows, and he’s on his knees before her. With one hand, she works his cock, bringing him to the point of release, over, and over, but never letting him tip over the edge. With her other hand, she feeds him: small morsels of fruit, and bite sized pastries, letting him lick the juice, and crumbs, and syrup from her fingers. She sips from a glass of wine, and kisses him with it still on her tongue, tiny mouthfuls, just enough to comfortably blur his sharp edges. </p><p>When she decides he has eaten enough, she draws herself up with the lightning swiftness only he knows she possesses, and sinks down onto him in a single, rapturous completion. It’s enough to finish him; he shudders beneath her, hips jerking, but she isn’t done with him yet. Hours of teasing and denial have done their work; she clenches around him, keeping him inside her, and presses her lips to his neck. A moment, two, and she feels him growing hard again. </p><p>She is a cavalier, he is a necromancer, with all that those roles entail, so she does the work of riding him, thighs and hips tireless, barely feeling the burn of her muscles compared to the greater heat he’s kindling in her cunt. But he is not passive; he knows just how to angle himself to provide the friction that drives her beyond reason with need, and his hands are not idle; she can barely follow their progress as one hand winds itself in her hair, tugging just hard enough to hurt. His other hand on her breast, squeezing, teasing, pinching. Then both his hands are on her ass, cupping her cheeks and parting them, reminding her of all the times he’s fucked her there. </p><p>He’s close, again, won’t last much longer, and she’s right there with him. He slips a hand between them, reaches down to circle her clit. Her orgasm is like a fist around him, insistent, and he surrenders to her, letting her wring a second climax from him. She cries out, her voice full-throated and deep, and he feels the vibrations of it as he kisses her. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day Two</strong>
</p><p>The next morning, she sees the glint of intelligence in his eyes, the Master Warden reasserting himself and leaving her Palamedes behind. The solution is novelty. If she doesn’t want to lose him to his work, she needs to give him a new problem to sink his teeth into.</p><p>It takes some doing; in their years together, there’s little they haven’t tried, mostly things that hold no interest. But she has faith in their almost infinite capacity for perversion, and something which isn’t innately erotic to her can be made unbearably sensual, in the Warden’s clever hands. </p><p>What she comes up with is a challenge. One doesn’t reach the position of Master Warden - or Cavalier Primary for that matter - without a competitive streak. </p><p>Camilla Hect would never be gauche enough to have trophies of her conquests, but she isn’t above keeping a few small touchstones of her most treasured memories. So - a test of his psychometry, a chance for him to flex that brilliant mind of his before she puts it away for the remainder of the week. </p><p>They sit cross-legged, facing each other, knees touching, and she’s blindfolded him. He is a sight to behold, and she wants to forget all her plans, push him back against the pillows and take him into her mouth until he blossoms into magnificent rigidity. She wants his fingers inside her, his tongue on her cunt, his cock in her ass. For just a moment, she opens herself up to wanting and devours his body with her eyes. It’s a good job he’s blindfolded; if he’d seen her face just then, there would have been no turning back and her scheming would have been for nothing. </p><p>Then she places the object she’s chosen into his hands. </p><p>“Hairbrush,” he says, confident, without hesitation. He turns it over, feeling the scratch of the stiff bristles against his skin, the smooth, flat sheen of the back, the solid plex of the handle, ridged to make it easy to grip. </p><p>“Agatha,” he says, after a little more time, naming one of the other cavaliers Camilla has trained with for years. “You brush her hair.”</p><p>Camilla waits, patient as a fox outside a burrow, as Palamedes works his way through what he’s seeing.</p><p>“Her hair is a mess, all knotted up - you’ve been training together, and you’re both sweaty, and tired, but too keyed up to rest - this is a ritual, to relax you.”</p><p>His body tells her, before his voice does, when he sees what she wants him to. His skin flushes, and his cheeks aren’t the only place his blood rushes to; his cock twitches into life.</p><p>“Sometimes it doesn’t exactly <em> relax </em> you, though, does it?” he says, a faint smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.</p><p>“Show me,” she says, and he does. </p><p>First, he lays her down on her stomach and runs the bristles of the hairbrush down her spine, over and over, and her skin knots into a riot of gooseflesh at the sensation. Soon she is burning with overstimulation, knowing that this could never break the skin, but so sensitive that each stroke feels like razor blades. </p><p>Without warning, he turns the brush in his hand, bringing the flat of it down across her buttocks. It hurts, but the solid smack of plex is a welcome counterpoint to the raw prickling of the skin on her back, and she cries out only with relief. He usually isn’t so rough with her unless she works to provoke it, but the memory is still in him, and Agatha understands in a way that Palamedes never will how she yearns for the finely honed instrument of her body to be tested to destruction. </p><p>And that’s where he takes her. Camilla and Agatha have followed these motions often enough that they are engraved into the very molecular structure of the hairbrush, as clear as an instruction manual for a psychometrist as talented as Palamedes. With borrowed proficiency, he works her over, until it feels like every inch of her is swollen, bruised, abraded. </p><p>Only then does he veer from the path laid before him. Agatha would beat her until she was languid and pliant, push apart legs still quivering with effort, and fuck her with the handle of the hairbrush until she screamed herself hoarse, before straddling her face. </p><p>Palamedes only has eyes for her, laid out on her back before him, as he reaches into the nightstand to pull out the bottle of oil they keep there. He rubs the oil up and down the length of the hairbrush handle with the same care as he’d use on his cock - enjoying how the motion catches her gaze - and she’s so wet that her thighs are slick and she can smell her arousal in the air, so the oil can mean only one thing. He sees understanding in her eyes, and then agreement, before he pushes the handle into her ass, thrusting and withdrawing at an unhurried, infuriating pace. </p><p>All the tension he’d beaten out of her starts creeping back in, coiling every muscle tight with impatience, until she’s babbling, begging him to just fuck her already, before she loses her mind. She doesn’t know how he can stand it; his own cock is so erect it must be painful, the head tapping against his stomach as it hadn’t since they’d been teenagers with the hormone rush of puberty to spur them on. </p><p>It isn’t until her pleas are wholly incoherent that he sets the hairbrush aside. She barely has time to miss the fullness before he’s replacing it with a plug - one of the larger ones they own, normally more to his tastes than hers, but she’s so ready that it slides in with almost no resistance. </p><p>At long last, he turns her over, and she’s kneeling, face pressed into the pillows, as he fucks her. She’s crying with relief, with gratitude, with the catharsis of being used completely, inside and out. She’s so full she feels she might overflow, and with each thrust the plug is forced a little further inside her, like he’s fucking her there too. </p><p>He handles all the clean up. If she was more inclined towards self-deception, she’d tell herself that she’s keeping him busy to distract him from his grief, but right now her true motivations are purely selfish. Nothing, short of an assassination attempt against the Warden, could move her from the bed, and she knows that Palamedes knows it; he swings his hips as he moves around the room, almost strutting with the satisfaction of a job - and a cavalier - well done.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day Three</strong>
</p><p>When she wakes in the morning, Camilla stretches, allowing herself to grin as the clamour of abused muscles reminds her of the previous day’s activities. Soon, he’ll wake, but today is one of those rare, sweet mornings where Palamedes’ own body conspires with Cam against him; he sleeps late, making up for all those early morning meetings, the late nights reviewing papers. </p><p>She could make breakfast, or step in the sonic and clean the lingering scents of sweat and sex from her skin. She probably ought to stretch, before bruised and overworked muscles stiffen even further than they already have overnight. </p><p>She does none of those things. Instead, she looks at him; his raw-boned face, the spare lines of his body, the slight tenting of the blanket, indicating that not all of him is still in repose. She slips a hand between her legs, brings herself to one idle, half-asleep climax after another. Every time she thinks she’s done, she remembers how he’d kneeled over her, ruthless in the face of her begging, eyes only ever on her face even as he’d fucked her ass with Agatha’s hairbrush, and her tired clit throbs <em> just one more.  </em></p><p>She knows when he wakes - <em> is there ever a moment when she isn’t completely aware of every inch of him? </em>- but she doesn’t stop. As soon as he gathers enough consciousness to himself to realise what she’s doing, he’s there between her legs, as gentle as yesterday he was rough, lips and tongue bringing her to a satisfaction which had been unobtainable alone. </p><p>She loves him. This is not a new realisation - far from it. She’s always loved him. But still, there are moments where it hits her like a shuttle landing on her chest, and she can’t quite believe that this is something she gets to have; his softness, his strength, the sheer glorious range of him. When she thinks she might die from wanting him, she turns the tables, pressing him back into the bed and taking him in her mouth. She’d swallow him whole, if she could, just to have him there inside of her forever. She settles for swallowing his cock, burying her face in the small, tidy thatch of hair that smells so indefinably, addictively, of him. </p><p>Breakfast is late enough that they call it brunch, and he serves it to her in bed. He’s an indifferent cook, but aware of his limitations; his repertoire of dishes is small, and simple, and he executes it satisfactorily. They lie in bed together afterwards, her head on his chest, talking about nothing at all, and it would be so easy to fall back asleep, but certain necessities must be seen to. </p><p>They change the sheets, and he draws her a bath. The water is buoyant - she dreads to think how much precious salt he’s wasted on her, but it’s so rare that he has the opportunity to cherish her like this, so she says nothing - and it’s so hot that she grits her teeth until she’s settled all the way into the water, and her body adjusts. The heat soaks the aches from her muscles, and the salt stings her raw skin in the most delicious of ways. </p><p>He sponges every inch of her clean, lathers shampoo into her hair, and rinses it with cup after cup of water, like an ancient pagan ritual, cleansing and claiming her, all in one. </p><p>The rest of their day is lazy, indulgent. They fuck a few times, casually, more out of a desire for comfort and intimacy than anything else. It’s a luxury, an unbelievable luxury, this time together with no demands upon them, no responsibilities other than to each other, and their own desires. </p><p>Cam finds herself wishing Dulcie had ended things a long time ago, and understands this as petty and irrational. Many people would be surprised to find Camilla Hect so uncharitable, but she knows that trying to avoid thinking unkind things altogether is childish folly, and pushing the thoughts away only means they’ll come back stronger. So she allows the idea to run to its conclusion, and understands it for what it is; she <em> isn’t </em> pleased that the Warden’s courtship of Duchess Septimus has come to an end, not really. She likes Dulcie, and has enjoyed corresponding with her. </p><p>Camilla is simply envious that Dulcie never has to <em> ask </em> for Palamedes’ time. </p><p>The solution, of course, is just to make time for herself in his life, as she has done this week, and she wishes she’d thought of it earlier. Grieving their loss of Dulcie - because Camilla always endeavoured to be honest with herself, and honesty means admitting it is <em> their </em>loss, not just his - would be a simpler process if it was just grief she was feeling, not a strange joy at having this time to just be them - Camilla and Palamedes, not the Warden and his Hand.</p><p>Palamedes is at the centre of so many conflicting responsibilities and demands, and she’s never wanted to exacerbate that. She has made of herself a haven, where nothing more is required of him than honesty, love, and a willingness to <em> actually eat and sleep sometimes</em>, but what's the point of a haven he never uses? She decides that making a few more demands of him will be better for both of them.</p><p>She falls asleep with these thoughts tucking themselves tidily away in her mind, with the satisfaction of a decision made.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day Four</strong>
</p><p>Camilla wakes the next morning giddy, and full up with the idea of being <em> demanding. </em> What did that look like? What could she <em> demand </em>that he didn’t already give her, just for the joy of giving it?</p><p>She’s quiet over breakfast, thinking, and it’s one of the things she loves most about him, that they can be quiet together. She’s had lovers who couldn’t stand silence, and had to fill each empty moment with chatter - they never lasted long. </p><p>She watches him pick up a knife in long-fingered hands and spread preserved fruit over his bread, and suddenly she knows what she wants. </p><p>“I’m going to teach you to use a knife.” </p><p>He looks up, apparently unperturbed by her sudden remark. “If you like,” he replies, mildly, looking back down to his plate. “Let me know what books I need.”</p><p>It’s a good job that she loves him. Her exasperation only makes her feel warm, and fond.</p><p>“It isn’t something you can learn from a book, Warden.”</p><p>Now his attention sharpens. “You mean -”</p><p>“<em>I’m </em>going to teach you.”</p><p>There are many reasons why her idea is a good one. Just because he’s a necromancer, and therefore not naturally inclined towards any great physical achievement, that doesn’t mean he can’t benefit from the exercise. If nothing else, Camilla finds practicing knife patterns to be meditative, and the Warden can certainly use the occasional mental quietude.</p><p>She will fight to the death to protect him, if she ever has to, and she’s confident in her abilities, but she isn’t an idiot. Anyone can be overpowered, and anyone can lose. Perhaps he’ll never need to raise a hand in his own defence while she lives, but if anything ever gets the better of her, she’ll go easy to the River knowing that he isn’t helpless alone.</p><p>She attends his meetings, reviews his papers, helps with his studies. She has an innate understanding of his work. It can only bring them to a more cohesive partnership if he gains a similar understanding of a cavalier’s duties.</p><p>Any of these things would have been adequate justification for her asking him to learn this. None of them are <em> her </em>reason. </p><p>Her reason is purely carnal. She pictures him holding her blades in a sure and confident grip, advancing on her with the slight swagger that comes with understanding balance, stance, centre of gravity. She thinks of him pinning her against the wall, one hand holding a knife to her throat, the other between her legs. </p><p>He sees the gleam in her eyes, the wicked twist of her lips, and doesn’t question when she doesn’t bother dressing before she leads him to the empty room in their quarters where she trains. He wears only his underwear, and she’s naked entirely, as she starts to show him the fundamentals of her craft. </p><p>He’s startled to discover that learning the knife doesn’t actually seem to involve a <em>knife</em>. She says he needs to learn how to stand, first. How to stand! As far as he was concerned, he was already completely proficient in the art of remaining upright. <em>Look Cam, no hands!</em></p><p>He’s definitely wrong, and he discovers quickly that standing, to a cavalier, means so much more than simply not falling over. The lesson involves nothing other than just contact, just her touching him.</p><p>Camilla, breasts crushed into his back, hands on his hips as she shows him how to smoothly shift his weight. Camilla with a knee between his legs, reminding him to widen his stance. Camilla, standing so close that he feels her breath hot on his face, palms flat on his chest, pushing, to show how much harder it is to throw him off balance when he stands as she’s instructed.</p><p>They stop, for a while, to eat, and he feels her eyes on his fingers, on his lips. Then, after a suitable pause for digestion, it’s back to the training room for more. And if he’d thought that he was competent at standing, because he does not fall, then not only does he have much to learn about standing, but also much to learn about falling.</p><p>Camilla, throwing him to the cushioned mats over and over, teaching him how to land without injuring himself. She knows his limits better than he does; he’s amazed at how many times she cajoles him back to his feet, long past the point where he’d have thought his delicate necromancer’s body wasn’t capable of so much as crawling. But he does it; she knocks him down, he gets back up, and gets back up, and gets back up, until he’s glowing with more than just sweat, he’s glowing with pride. </p><p>He’s not used to feeling accomplished for any physical feat, and there’s something intoxicating about it. When she finally judges that he’s exhausted enough to take a break, and holds out her hands to pull him to his feet, he pulls her down instead. She doesn’t resist.</p><p>And then they’re wrestling, rolling over and over as each tries to gain the upper hand. He was fatigued before they started, and he’s never wrestled before in his life, where she’s as proficient in this as she is in any of the other fighting arts. She should have him pinned in a heartbeat, but she’s enjoying the rare physicality of him too much to let it end so quickly. </p><p>Finally, she holds him down. He’s on his stomach, and she twists his arms behind his back, holding both of his slender wrists in one hand. It’s enough to keep him immobile, but not enough to hurt him, or even cause him any discomfort, beyond the frustration of his erection pinned beneath him, untouched. </p><p>She slips three fingers of her free hand inside herself and groans with the pleasure of it, enjoying the futile bucking of his hips as he hears her. She fucks herself, and when she’s done, she puts her fingers to his lips; he licks them clean, whimpering faintly with desire, before she lets him go. </p><p>“Cam,” he says, pulling himself to his knees and staring at her with eyes that are wide and lust-dark. “<em>Please.”  </em></p><p>She lets him push her back down to the mat, on her back, and she spreads her knees for him, inviting, but he doesn’t fuck her. Not yet. He kneels, burying his face in her cunt, and his moan of wanton abandon seems to resonate all the way through to her bones. He is sloppy with enthusiasm, tongue slipping inside her cunt as often as it circles her clit, and they both know she won’t get off from it, but that isn’t what this is about. He wants to cover himself in her; he’d bathe in her, if he could. He loves every inch of her, but <em> this </em> part… this part is something special. </p><p>Finally, he puts his hands under her thighs, and she lifts her legs obligingly, hugging her knees to her chest. His tongue drifts lower, circling her asshole in the way he knows she loves, the way that makes her feel more naked than naked, more helplessly vulnerable than a cavalier primary can ever truly be. She can’t articulate why, not really, but something about this always leaves her feeling liquid, languid, like all conscious thought has left her completely. </p><p>Only then does he fuck her. It’s a quiet thing; the rest of his body is as limp as his dick is hard, and only the overwhelming force of his desire for her is keeping him from falling to the mat himself. He has no energy spare for noise; his whole self is focused down to a singular, overriding need for her cunt around him. If he could spare even the thought to wonder, he wouldn’t be sure he was breathing. She doesn’t moan, or cry out; the only sound in the room is her gentle sighs of total satisfaction. </p><p>He collapses onto her afterwards, head resting in the hollow between her breasts, and she strokes his hair and whispers adoration. The warm bubble of their afterglow lasts until the sweat cools on their bodies, and he starts to shiver. </p><p>He’s dismayed to discover that his labours are not yet finished. Cam makes them both stretch their tired muscles with the stubborn implacability of a drill sergeant, despite his exhausted protests. Afterwards, she surprises him by scooping him into her arms with a giggle. She carries him to bed like a bride - though his body is so long she has to turn sideways to get them through the doors. By the time she lets him go, a little above the bed so that he falls a few inches and bounces, he’s chuckling too, and laughter eases the last lingering aches which stretching did not. They both sleep deeply that night. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day Five</strong>
</p><p>The next day, she puts the knife in his hands, and instantly regrets it. He’s all fingers and thumbs, clearly on edge, visibly aware of the knife as a <em> threat </em>not as an extension of himself. </p><p>He’s trying. She can see that he’s trying, and somehow that makes it worse. They stop for tea, and the heat of the mug in her hands is a simple, easy comfort. </p><p>“It means something different, in your hands,” he says at last. “I can see that it does. I want to understand. I want to know how it feels, for you.”</p><p>She looks at him for a long moment, reading layers of meaning into the set of his lips, his open hands, palm up on the table between them, the way he meets her eyes.</p><p>“You mean it?” she asks. They understand each other so well, inside and out, and she doesn’t need to ask, but she wants to. “It’s not normally your” - she gestures wryly with the mug in her hands - “cup of tea.”</p><p>“I trust you.”</p><p>*</p><p>He’s lying in the bed, a blindfold over his eyes, and she’s tied each of his limbs with loving care, looping the ropes again and again until they are a firm reassuring pressure. The intention isn’t to bind him, not exactly - she could free him in a moment if he wanted it, and he knows that she would. The ropes give him the freedom from having to control or moderate his responses, without her needing to worry that he could move too much, and hurt himself. </p><p>“I’m not going to start with the knife,” she says, when she has him arranged as she wants him. </p><p>And she doesn’t. She starts somewhere more familiar; kisses his neck, feeling the heat of his skin, the pounding of his pulse against her lips. He fits the definition of <em> aroused, </em>in its every permutation. She sinks her teeth, ever-so-gently, into his skin, not enough to hurt, but enough to startle, and hears him gasp. She builds the sensations slowly, with just her own body, teeth and nails, until she judges that he’s ready for more. </p><p>She made herself another mug of tea before they started, and she’s almost surprised to find it still hot; her world has shrunk down to his skin beneath her hands, the taste of him on her lips, and it feels like she must always have been here in this bed, all other memories only a dream. She holds the mug until the heat sinks into her hands, almost painful, and then she strokes him with fever-hot fingertips. </p><p>There’s another glass on the nightstand - she came prepared - and she plucks a half-melted lozenge of ice from the glass, and puts it between her lips, rolling it around her mouth until it has melted fully away. She leans forward to kiss one of his nipples, feeling it grow hard at the chill. </p><p>By the time she’s ready for the knife, it has been chilling in the ice water for a long time, and even the handle is cool to the touch. </p><p>“Are you ready?” </p><p>He nods.</p><p>The knife sits easy in her hand. She chose it carefully. It was not a fighting knife, but one from their small kitchen, because she wants the versatility; the cutting edge is sharp, as all her blades are, but it isn’t that edge that she uses. Instead, she trails the dull back of the knife over his chest with no force at all, only the weight of the knife itself. </p><p>Still, he hisses. The metal touching his skin may be blunt, but it’s icy, and the cold lends it an artificial sharpness. Though she’s known for as long as she can remember that her place is at her Warden’s side, she’s taken a few classes with the Nereids, out of curiosity, and this was one of the tricks she’d learned. The first time the tutor had blindfolded her and traced patterns on the soft flesh of her inner arm with an ice-cold knife, she’d been convinced she could feel her skin part beneath the blade, that the beads of ice-water left behind were her own spilled blood. She remembers running her hand over her arm afterwards, again and again, marvelling at the smooth, unbroken skin.</p><p>Perfect safety, with the illusion of dire peril. It’s an intoxicating mix. </p><p>She’s gratified to find that his erection hasn’t flagged; either he’s gaining appreciation for the sharper pleasures she adores, or all that matters to him is that it’s <em> her</em>. She moves herself forwards, straddling his hips, rather than his thighs, settling carefully down until his cock is nestled between her folds, and she rocks against him, as she continues drawing lines of ice and steel over his body. </p><p>He climaxes, and she sees how the heat of it shocks him, along the chilled skin of his stomach. She laps it up, knowing that the warmth of her mouth will be just as startling. Then she moves up the bed again, until she can press her cunt into his face, and he is as meticulous and skillful today as he had been eager and messy the day before, as though he has himself become the knife, cutting cleanly through to the heart of her pleasure. </p><p>Late that night, as she’s drifting off to sleep, he says: “We should do that again,” and she falls into unconsciousness with a smile on her face.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day Six</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>“I love you,” he says, and for a moment, she doesn’t breathe, because it isn’t just <em> I love you. </em> He says it like <em> I love you and… </em> or worse, <em> I love you but.  </em></p><p>She waits, seconds stretching out into agony as he searches for the words he wants to say. Palamedes is never lost for words; if she weren’t unreasonably terrified, she’d probably find this funny.</p><p>Eventually, he says: “I love her too.”</p><p><em> Love, </em> not <em> loved. </em>Because why would rejection make any difference to how he feels about Dulcie? His Dulcie, their Dulcie. </p><p>“You know the rules,” Camilla says, as gently as she can. “And this isn’t the kind of rule that you can bend, just because you’re Master Warden now; if anything, those sorts of laws bind more tightly on those with greater status. You’re both under too much scrutiny.”</p><p>“I know,” he sighs. “I know. But I just hoped… she needs me. <em> Me, </em>not the Master Warden. It felt good to be needed.”</p><p>“I need you.”</p><p>“Don’t flatter me, Camilla. My ego doesn’t need boosting that badly, and insincerity isn’t a good look on you. You’ve never needed anything; you’re brilliant, and self-sufficient, and you could kill me with your little finger.”</p><p>She kisses him, half out of affection, and half so she doesn’t have to meet his eyes when she confesses how far short she falls from this image he has of her.</p><p>“For a genius, you can be a real idiot, sometimes, Warden. Dulcinea Septimus doesn’t need you any more than I do, and I don’t need you any less than she ever could.”</p><p>“Cam -” he begins, but she cuts him off. </p><p>“You think I don’t need you, because I take other lovers, and you never do? Or because I don’t need you to remind me to look after myself? You <em> see </em> me, and you’re the only person who does. The only person who ever has. I thought that Dulcie… maybe… but that’s a chance none of us are ever going to have. It’s you and me, now. Palamedes and Camilla, Camilla and Palamedes.”</p><p>“Camillamedes?” he grins, and takes her hands in his, kisses the worn and calloused skin of her knuckles. She doesn’t dignify the remark by responding, but she can’t help smiling back at him. </p><p>“Do you remember the first time we had sex?” she asks, overcome with nostalgia for what she knows wasn’t a simpler time, not really, but looks that way through the lens of hindsight. </p><p>“As if I could ever forget. I walked in on you in the shower - by accident, of course.”</p><p>“Of course,” and there’s humour in her tone, but she’d known even at the time that the accident had been genuine. Palamedes would never have taken such a liberty intentionally.</p><p>“And you said that while I was there, I <em> might as well make myself useful.”  </em></p><p>“You made yourself <em> very </em>useful, as I recall. Fancy a shower?” </p><p>*</p><p>They remember very quickly why this is something they stopped doing, as soon as they had quarters of their own. The shower is large enough - technically - but at age twenty he still hasn’t quite finished growing into himself; he’s all arms and legs, and more than once he slams his elbow into the plex of the shower screen, hard enough to send tingles up and down his arm. </p><p>She ends up standing on one leg, facing the wall, breasts crushed against the tile, her other knee braced into the corner. Even when she lifts herself up on tiptoes, he’s tall enough that he has to stand with his legs splayed, feeling ridiculous, as he pushes into her from behind. </p><p>This isn’t a shower for getting clean; they are each too precarious on their feet - or foot - to want to dare anything which might make the floor slippier. The sex is distinctly unsatisfying, as sex goes, but that doesn’t matter, because the sex isn’t the point. Camilla is laughing so hard she gets a mouthful of shower spray, and almost snorts it out of her nose. The rhythm of Palamedes’ thrusting is irregular, out of time, disrupted by his giggles. Every time he thinks he might regain his composure, she looks at him over her shoulder, exaggeratedly coy, and the eye contact dissolves him into laughing once more. </p><p>They burn through three days’ water allowance in an hour, and they don’t regret a moment of it. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Day Seven</strong>
</p><p>The final day of their break is mostly occupied with dull necessities. There are dishes to be washed and laundry to be hung, and so many other petty realities of life they’ve neglected. They make the most of even this time, exchanging kisses as they pass each other in the hall, brushing fingertips as he hands her clean dishes to put away. </p><p>In the early evening, he’s hanging out laundry, and she’s polishing her knives, ready for the morning’s training. The strokes of her oilcloth become long, lingering and totally inefficient as she watches him bend over to pull wet clothes from the basket. As soon as he’s finished with the laundry, she puts her blades aside and walks up behind him, holding him close, his buttocks fitting neatly into the valley between her hips. </p><p>“Time for bed,” she says, in a voice which brooks no argument. </p><p>He strips, and throws his clothes into the laundry hamper with a scowl at how quickly the damn thing seems to refill, no matter how often he empties it. By the time he turns back around, she’s buckling a harness around her bare hips, and he can’t think of a single good reason to do anything other than fall to his knees at her feet, and take her cock into his mouth, so that’s what he does. </p><p>The cock she’s chosen for tonight is thick, and no amount of enthusiasm can make it comfortable for him to hold in his mouth for long, but the sight of him on his knees, staring up at her, drives her wild, and he knows it, and so he judges it more than worth the mild ache in his jaw. Before long they’re scrambling to the bed, and she’s arranging the pillows for him to lie on, because he’s too impatient, and wouldn’t bother, but she plans to take her time with him, and wants him to be comfortable.</p><p>He lies down, and she admires the length of his back. Most of her lovers are other cavaliers, and there’s always something special, something secret about his bare skin, unscarred and soft. She sees that skin prickle with anticipation as he hears the <em> snap </em> of the glove, the <em> click </em> as she opens the bottle of oil. There’s the brief involuntary flinch, as she touches him with a single, slick finger, and then he relaxes, surrendering completely as she pushes inside. One finger, and then two. <em>T</em><em>hree</em>, and he’s panting, hands twisted into the sheets. She has her spare hand on the small of his back, soothing and gentling, but he doesn’t need the comfort. He loves this to the point that it’s almost a fetish, adores being pushed to his limits with a challenge that requires nothing of him but perfect passivity. </p><p>Four fingers.</p><p>“Yes?” she asks.</p><p>
  <em> “Yes."  </em>
</p><p>She pours more oil over her hand, and then tucks her thumb into her palm. Slowly, with exquisite gentleness, she works her way in. He sighs with satisfaction and accomplishment as the pressure eases, and he knows that the widest part of her hand is inside him. She gives him a moment to adjust, and then she rotates her arm so that the palm of her hand is on top, her knuckles underneath, pressing into that spot that lends a high, breathy whimper to his panting. She begins to rock her hand, not a thrusting, only the smallest of movements, but they reverberate visibly through his body. She adores his responsiveness, and tells him, in vividly-described detail, how each flex and shudder of his long-boned body speaks directly to her cunt. </p><p>When she finally withdraws, it’s like she’s pulled every bone from his body, along with her fist. He sprawls across the pillows she arranged for him, limp, but unspent. She peels the glove from her hand and discards it, and then she’s spreading oil over her cock, caressing the smooth silicone and allowing herself to pretend for a moment that it’s skin she strokes, her own hard flesh that she’s now teasing him with, before she bucks her hips and slides in, making a space for herself inside of him.</p><p>The cock she’s chosen is featureless and smooth, perfect for the long, slow, deep strokes she now uses. The straps of the harness run around her thighs, leaving her cunt bare, but if she presses her thighs together, there’s <em> just </em> enough friction, <em> just </em> enough pressure, but really, it’s nothing to do with friction, nothing to do with pressure. It’s the knowledge that she’s fucking him, the sight of her cock disappearing inside him, his hands making helpless, spasmodic fists in the sheets and his half-vocalised <em> yes… yes… oh god, Cam, yes.  </em></p><p>Her right hand is on his hip, but her left is still covered in oil, and she leans forward, reaching down to find his cock. When she closes her hand around it, it’s like a stone dropped into still water. His body <em> ripples. </em>And now he’s setting the rhythm, arching his back into her cock, and then curling into her hand, back and forth, back and forth, and in that moment they are united by a single thought: the desire to take this moment and bottle it, to drink deep, to drown in this moment and inhabit it forever. </p><p>But even the most perfect of moments ends - that’s what makes them perfect. She cries out, and wraps herself around him, yearning to touch him with every part of her as she rides out the waves and aftershocks of orgasm, and it’s this sudden enveloping that finishes him too. </p><p>Sweaty, sticky, and replete, it’s a long time before either of them can bear even the small departure from each other which is required to make themselves and their surroundings ready for sleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to adjuvantQ for the concept of doing ~sexy things~ with psychometry, and to darlingofdots for beta reading, and of course, thank you to ChillyWeirdoInACoffin for organising the event!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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